Pastor convicted of immigration fraud

From the NY Post:

A Queens deacon has been convicted of helping Chinese immigrants seek asylum over bogus religious beliefs by coaching them in how to lie to the feds.

Liying Lin, a 30-year-old deacon at the Full Gospel Global Mission Church in Flushing, was found guilty by a Manhattan federal jury on Tuesday on three of the four counts of immigration-fraud charges she had faced.

The feds say she offered paid lessons on Christianity to immigrants and then coached them on how to falsely seek asylum by claiming they were persecuted by China for their religious beliefs.

She is one of 26 defendants indicted by the feds in 2012 for allegedly participating in separate but overlapping immigration-fraud schemes related to the submission of hundreds of asylum applications containing fabricated claims of persecution. Most of the defendants are law firm staffers, including six Big Apple lawyers and many paralegals.

At peace on a rooftop

From the Daily News:

African immigrants hoping to be granted U.S. asylum have discovered a taste of home on top of the city's largest rooftop farm.

The Refugee Immigrant Fund Asylum Help Center, a Queens nonprofit that aids those fleeing persecution and torture, has partnered with a 40,000 square-foot rooftop farm in Long Island City to give refugees a unique opportunity to work the soil in their new urban home.

"Having contact with the ground is very important for me, even if it's on a roof in a big city like New York." said Erick Kpakpo, 31, from Central Africa, who is waiting to be granted asylum.

Through the fund's Urban Farm Recovery Project, three interns from Africa work two days a week at the Brooklyn Grange farm. Organizers say the program can be healing for the participants and gives them a chance to meet New Yorkers and settle into their new lives in the city.

It hasn't been an easy road to the United States for the immigrants chosen for the project, say organizers noting they faced rape, violence, kidnapping and torture at home and now must deal with the stress of waiting for asylum.

The U.S grants asylum to people who have been persecuted or fear persecution on account of race, religion, nationality or politics.